Albany, New York isn't just the seat of a clown car state government -- it's also a college town. And college students, when boozed to the gills, can out-bozo politicians. (Well, almost.) On March 12th crowds of drunken students rioted in the Albany neighborhood known as the student ghetto. Their cellphones captured the riot. YouTube took it viral. Suddenly, all eyes were on Albany's student ghetto.
Sean Patrick Griffin’s new book Gaming the Game won’t make disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy happy. In 2007, Donaghy was busted by the feds for conspiring with pro gambler Jimmy “Baba” Battista and their mutual boyhood pal, low-level drug dealer and all round dogsbody Tommy Martino. Donaghy had been supplying Battista with picks on games [...]
Remember the late great Tea Party? The grass roots movement that made the political establishment quake? For one glorious moment it seemed as if a truly independent, average Joe/Joan movement might be gathering steam. A memory from that halcyon time: assorted TV pundits telling Republican leaders that Tea Party people “don’t like you guys either.” [...]
With government now owning or insuring 97% of mortgage bonds via Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), taxpayers are on the hook more than ever. And they're paying for new twists. Quoting mortgage fraud attorney L. T. Lafferty, a former federal prosecutor specializing in white collar crime, "fraud is ... perpetrated differently when there are different opportunities."
Protesters fed up with political repression, corruption and poverty (particularly recent food price inflation) toppled the government of Tunisia. They threaten to do the same in other countries throughout the Mideast as pundits hail the "Twitter and Facebook revolution." But repressive governments have as much compunction about shutting down communication services as they do about torturing dissidents.
Until polls showed public support was waning, most of the fourth estate banged the drum for the Iraq war and kissed the rump of the Bush administration. Those on the right like to say that the mainstream media is overwhelmingly liberal. Maybe so in sentimental moments. But ultimately they worship at the altar of triumphant big government.
Most disturbing are the calls to use government power to censor certain forms of speech, and even outlaw certain types of criticism of public officials. This was the completely apolitical act of a violent and disturbed man. How sad that the attempted murder of the Congresswoman who had just read the First Amendment on the House floor would be used in efforts to chill free speech!
Sometimes a story is so local it jumps up and bites you. Such is the case with the stash of potentially explosive materials found in an apartment building in the town where I live. The kind of old leafy suburb extolled by folks who like old leafy suburbs. So when a stockpile of HAZMAT materials turns up in the basement of a small tidy apartment complex in an old leafy neighborhood, eyebrows get raised.
Ho humdrum. It's back to political bidness in the Empire State. The gubernatorial race ended just as predicted. Andrew Cuomo finally got elected to something. (Becoming attorney general on Eliot Spitzer's coat tails doesn't count.) Not that beating Carl Paladino is proof of public appeal.
On October 22, fire broke out in an enormous (11 stories, 500,000 square feet) abandoned warehouse on the Albany waterfront. Smoke blanketed a large section of downtown, an adjacent highway, and a railroad bridge that carries Amtrak over the Hudson River to points west.
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